It appears the original posters frustration was the 2 turnovers. It was motion offense vs. a non pressing team. The point guard isn't going to have the ball all the time, although that's where the offense originates The ratio was a bit of an abnormally, but not unheard of. He did have a 41 passer rating, although well below for the average point guard to have, it still can be adequate. If you have guys with the ability to get open, it can make the PG's job much easier.

Posted by thewizard17 on 1/20/2014 9:22:00 PM (view original):It appears the original posters frustration was the 2 turnovers. It was motion offense vs. a non pressing team. The point guard isn't going to have the ball all the time, although that's where the offense originates The ratio was a bit of an abnormally, but not unheard of. He did have a 41 passer rating, although well below for the average point guard to have, it still can be adequate. If you have guys with the ability to get open, it can make the PG's job much easier.

He was talking about a pf with poor passing racking up six assists in limited minutes just because he was slotted at pg on the depth chart.

Posted by ekswimmer on 1/20/2014 6:36:00 PM (view original):Gillispie, just for my sake, I wanted to get some clarification. My understanding is passing helps allow for better shot selection and a byproduct is going to be better shooting percentages. It always seemed that assists were tied to passing abilities (to a degree). So would it not stand to reason that teams that average larger assist numbers generally will also see a correlation in shooting percentage?

the effect you describe didnt used to exist, which is why assists were 100% window dressing. assists are dished out AFTER shots go in based on some meaningless logic to cook the stats in a semi-realistic manner. of course, one could argue the way those stats are cooked likely bears some resemblance to the way players allow team mates to get better looks. but we really have no way to know if that is true, its pure speculation. the reality is, of course, there is going to be some similarity, just because obviously passing has to have much to do with both. but to try to actually draw any conclusions from assist figures is very speculative and dangerous, and i strongly advise against it. for evidence, look at the situation here from the OP - does that 6 assist figure suggest that PF helped his team get open looks, in a manner effective for a player playing the PG position? of course not.

i guess what are are asking is slightly different - will slightly larger team assist figures result in slightly higher shooting percentage? probably, but its impossible to draw anything. its a chicken and egg problem. teams who score more are going to have more assists, generally speaking, because there are more opportunities to credit an assist (more made baskets). now if you are going to look at assist rates off made shots, is there possibly something there? possibly, but its still very dangerous because you have no way of knowing if the logic that determines the superficial assignment of assists lines up with the logic that increases the quality of team mates' looks with, for example, a stellar passing PG. because these two pieces of logic were created many years apart, by two different game admins/developers, i would bet the answer there is no.

as someone who always was trying to find places to look for clues in areas others had written off, i feel pretty strongly looking to assists to draw any conclusion is a fool's errand. i could be wrong, but i seriously doubt it.

Posted by ekswimmer on 1/20/2014 6:36:00 PM (view original):Gillispie, just for my sake, I wanted to get some clarification. My understanding is passing helps allow for better shot selection and a byproduct is going to be better shooting percentages. It always seemed that assists were tied to passing abilities (to a degree). So would it not stand to reason that teams that average larger assist numbers generally will also see a correlation in shooting percentage?

the effect you describe didnt used to exist, which is why assists were 100% window dressing. assists are dished out AFTER shots go in based on some meaningless logic to cook the stats in a semi-realistic manner. of course, one could argue the way those stats are cooked likely bears some resemblance to the way players allow team mates to get better looks. but we really have no way to know if that is true, its pure speculation. the reality is, of course, there is going to be some similarity, just because obviously passing has to have much to do with both. but to try to actually draw any conclusions from assist figures is very speculative and dangerous, and i strongly advise against it. for evidence, look at the situation here from the OP - does that 6 assist figure suggest that PF helped his team get open looks, in a manner effective for a player playing the PG position? of course not.

i guess what are are asking is slightly different - will slightly larger assist figures result in slightly higher shooting percentage? probably, but its impossible to draw anything. its a chicken and egg problem. teams who score more are going to have more assists, generally speaking, because there are more opportunities to credit an assist (more made baskets). now if you are going to look at assist rates off made shots, is there possibly something there? possibly, but its still very dangerous because you have no way of knowing if the logic that determines the superficial assignment of assists lines up with the logic that increases the quality of team mates' looks with, for example, a stellar passing PG. because these two pieces of logic were created many years apart, by two different game admins/developers, i would bet the answer there is no.

as someone who always was trying to find places to look for clues in areas others had written off, i feel pretty strongly looking to assists to draw any conclusion is a fool's errand. i could be wrong, but i seriously doubt it.

I think we're talking about two slightly different things. I wasn't talking about trying to decipher anything from individual player stats because like you and Girt said, they're just dressing. I guess I always assumed that team assists were correlated with passing to some degree. And from there distributed to players, with an emphasis on guards. If that were the case, you could draw some conclusions from the team stats. But I could be wrong and these are just a sum of the players'. That's mostly why I chimed in to see if I've always looked at team assists and don't need to.

i was talking about team assists in the 2nd paragraph, sorry, edited to make that clearer. let me try to clarify how assists are given to players:
1) player makes basket
2) engine rolls a dice to see if an assist will be assigned. this is based on the engine's crappy guess of the % of shots from this team that should be assisted. it appears this guess was not updated with the real logic to determine how teammates give each other better open looks.
3) if yes, assist is randomly assigned to some player on the team, based on a weighted probability distribution (PG gets more assists). its clear a player's stats have some degree of influence, but are a small factor compared to position. also who took the shot has some impact.

the logic behind assists being dished out is totally superfluous, it has nothing to do with helping a player make a shot. all that is in common behind team assists and success through getting better looks, is that there are some common elements. think of this like top 25 and the projection report. neither is based on the other, but they have some common elements, so there is some similarity. however, there is nothing you can directly learn about one by studying the other.

if you are simply using assists to gauge a team's passing ability, i would just glance at the passing rating of their guards.

im not sure if that helps, if not, sorry - its not the easiest topic :)

Posted by willowcards2 on 1/17/2014 7:22:00 PM (view original):doesn't this go back to lineups and playing your best players that help your team win? I have a SF who is a 94 ATH and 81 DEF but only 37/31 for BH/P.Would you guys play him at SG if the other teams leading scorer played the same position ( 64ath/82spd/82 pe/79 bh74 pass)

Yes, I agree with you if he was there best player, but his DEF, BH, PASS ratings all suck so this doesn't prove your theory that best player at any position. He wasn't there best player. Thank you Girt and gillipse. This has been an educational thread. Here are his last 2 games. Brooks 18 min, 0-1, 1 TO, 1 ST; next game 1-5, 1 asst, 1 TO, 2 ST. My point is against my best def. he should of been a TO machine.